Washington (February 9,
2016)
- The President’s Budget for fiscal year 2017 (FY 2017) includes $4.620 billion
in gross discretionary funding for the Civil Works program of the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers (Corps).

"The 2017 Civil Works budget for the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers reflects the Administration's priorities to support and
improve the Nation's economy, protect the American people, and restore our
environment," said the Honorable Jo-Ellen Darcy, Assistant Secretary of
the Army for Civil Works."This
Budget supports the core mission areas of coastal and inland navigation,
reducing flood and storm risks, and restoring aquatic ecosystems.

"The Budget enables the Corps to
responsibly carry out its important missions, while advancing key
Administration initiatives to increase renewable energy production, reduce
greenhouse gas impacts, combat invasive species, and increase community
resilience in the wake of natural disasters," said Darcy."The Budget continues to reflect the
tough choices necessary to put the country on a fiscally sustainable
path."

The
FY 2017 funding will be distributed among the appropriations accounts as
follows:

$2.705 billion for Operation and
Maintenance

$1.09 billion for Construction

$222 million for Mississippi River
and Tributaries

$200 million for the Regulatory
Program

$180 million for Expenses

$103 million for the Formerly
Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP)

$85
million for Investigations

$30
million for Flood Control and Coastal Emergencies

$5 million for the Office of the
Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works

The
FY 2017 Budget includes $1.934 billion for the study, design, construction,
operation and maintenance of inland and coastal navigation projects.It funds capital investments on the inland
waterways based on the estimated revenues to the Inland Waterways Trust
Fund.The Budget gives priority to
coastal harbors and inland waterways with the most commercial traffic.It also funds harbors that support significant
commercial fishing, subsistence, or public transportation benefits.

The
FY 2017 Investigations program as a whole is funded at $92 million, including
$7 million from the Mississippi River and Tributaries (MR&T) account, to
fund studies to determine the need, engineering feasibility, and economic,
environmental and social return of potential solutions for water and related
land resource problems.This includes $6.7
million for work on proposals to deepen and/or widen ten high and moderate
commercial use U.S. harbors and channels:Houston Ship Channel, TX; Manatee Harbor, FL; Matagorda Ship Channel,
TX; Mississippi River Ship Channel, Gulf to Baton Rouge, LA; Mobile Harbor, AL;
New Haven Harbor, CT; Norfolk Harbor, VA; Port of Long Beach, CA; San Juan, PR;
Seattle Harbor, WA; and Unalaska (Dutch) Harbor, AK.

The Investigations account also includes $26
million for Corps' efforts, in conjunction with state floodplain management
authorities, to provide technical and planning assistance to enable local
communities to reduce their flood risk, including non-structural
approaches.The Budget continues to
invest in the development of interagency teams known as Silver Jackets to
provide unified federal assistance in implementing flood risk management
solutions.

The
FY 2017 Construction program is funded at $1.154 billion, including $64 million
in the MR&T account.The
construction program uses objective, performance-based guidelines to allocate
funding toward the highest performing economic, environmental, and public
safety investments.

The
FY 2017 Budget includes $239 million for safety modifications on seven dam
safety, seepage control and static instability correction projects and $3.3
million for interim risk reduction measures for dams with a significant risk.

The FY 2017 construction program includes one
high-priority new construction start, Mud Mountain Dam, WA, an Aquatic
Ecosystem Restoration project in response to a Biological Opinion for
endangered salmon.

The
FY 2017 O&M program is funded at $2.856 billion, including $151 million in
the MR&T account.For O&M, the
Budget emphasizes performance of existing projects by focusing on those coastal
harbors and inland waterways with the most commercial traffic, as well as
safety improvements at federal dams and levees based on the risk and
consequence of a failure. The Budget also funds maintenance work at harbors that support significant commercial fishing, subsistence, or public transportation benefits.

The FY 2017 O&M program also funds the completion of 28 master plans and water reallocation studies at Corps projects.

Collaborating
with federal, non-federal, state and local partners, the Corps completed the
North Atlantic Coast Comprehensive Study (Comprehensive Study) in 2015, a
report that developed a universal Coastal Storm Risk Management Framework that
identified a set of structural, non-structural natural, nature-based, and
programmatic measures to manage flood risk and promote resilience for
approximately 31,000 miles of coastline, from New Hampshire to Virginia.The FY 2017 Budget will fund work for six of
the nine Focus Areas identified in the Comprehensive Study.They are New York-New Jersey Harbor and
Tributaries, NY and NJ; New Jersey Back Bays, NJ; City of Norfolk, VA; Nassau
County Back Bays, NY; Delaware Inland Bays and Delaware Bay Coast, DE; and the
District of Columbia, DC.These areas
were selected based on the readiness of the local sponsors to cost-share
further investigations work.

The
FY 2017 aquatic ecosystem restoration program is funded at $375 million with
$336 million from Construction, $20 million from O&M and $19 million from
Investigations.

This
program supports restoring aquatic habitat to a less degraded, more natural
condition in ecosystems where ecosystem structure, function, and processes have
been degraded.Priority aquatic
ecosystems supported by the Budget include the California Bay-Delta, the
Chesapeake Bay, the Everglades, the Great Lakes, and the Gulf Coast.Other ecosystem efforts include the Columbia
River and priority work in the Upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

The
Corps will continue to work with other federal, state and local agencies, using
the best available science and adaptive management to protect and restore these
ecosystems.

The
FY 2017 Budget funds Recreation at $267 million, with approximately $255
million in the O&M account and $12 million in the MR&T account.The Corps is the nation’s largest provider of
federal recreation opportunities, with 370 million visits to Corps’ lands and
waters per year.

The
FY 2017 Regulatory Program is funded at $200 million and will improve the
protection of the nation’s waters and wetlands, while providing greater
efficiency in permit processing.

The
FY 2017 FUSRAP program is funded at $103 million to continue remediation
activities at 20 sites contaminated by the Nation’s early efforts to develop
atomic weapons.

Based
on the Corps’ contribution to the response and recovery of communities after
natural disasters strike, and the inevitability that there will be more,
Emergency Management is funded it
$35 million in FY 2017, with $30 million in the FCCE account for preparedness
and training to respond to floods, hurricanes, and other natural disasters, and
$5 million in the O&M account.